Marita Golden
Marita Golden is a 5-Time AALBC.com Bestselling Author
Marita Golden was Voted the #46 Favorite Author of the 20th Century
Biography of Marita Golden
In a professional writing career that spans more than twenty years, Marita Golden
has distinguished herself as a novelist, essayist, teacher of writing and
literary institution builder. Her fiction includes the novels Long Distance
Life, (a best-seller, cited as a Best Book of the Year by Washington Post
critic Jonathan Yardley), A Woman’s Place, And Do Remember Me, and
The Edge of Heaven. In the genre of nonfiction, Marita Golden has edited
three anthologies, Gumbo: An Anthology of African America Writing with E.
Lynn Harris; Wild Women Don’t Wear No Blues: Black Women Writers on Love, Men
and Sex; and with writer Susan Shreve, Skin Deep: Black and White Women
on Race.
As a memoirist and essayist, Golden has authored Migrations of the Heart,
Saving Our Sons: Raising Black Children in a Turbulent World, and A
Miracle Everyday: Triumph and Transformation in the Lives of Single Mothers.
All of Marita Golden’s texts are widely read and used in college courses that
represent a wide range of disciplines, from literature, African American
Studies, and anthropology, to women’s studies.
As a teacher of writing, Marita Golden has held appointments at George Mason
University, and Virginia Commonwealth University, where she served as a member
of the MFA Graduate Creative Writing Program. She has also taught at Emerson
College, The University of Lagos (Nigeria), Roxbury Community College, and
American University.
Marita Golden has lectured on the topic of literature, women’s studies,
African-American Studies and African American literature nationally and
internationally. She has read from her work and held writer-in-residence
positions at many schools, including Brandeis University, Hampton University,
Simmons College, Columbia College, William and Mary, Old Dominion University and
Howard University. She has also been a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Articles
and essays by Marita Golden have appeared in Essence Magazine, the New
York Times and The Washington Post.
Marita Golden founded and served as the first president of the Washington-D.C.
based African American Writers Guild. Since 1990 she has headed the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard
Wright Foundation, which presents the nation’s only national fiction award
for college writers of African descent and an annual summer writer’s workshop
for Black writers, Hurston/Wright Writers’ Week, as well as the Hurston/Wright
Legacy Award for published Black writers.
Among the awards Marita Golden has received in recognition of her writing
career and her work as a "literary cultural worker," are the 2002 Authors Guild
Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community, the Barnes and Noble
2001 Writers for Writers Award presented by Poets and Writers; an honorary
Doctorate from the University of Richmond; Induction into the International Hall
of Fame for Writers of African Descent at the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago
State University; Woman of the Year Award from Zeta Phi Beta; and a
Distinguished Alumni Award from American University.
In the area of community and public service, Marita Golden is a member of the
Board of Directors of the Girl Scouts of America, The Authors Guild and has
served as a member of the PEN/Faulkner Board, a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award
and on the Advisory Committee for the Mobil Pegasus Prize for Literature.;
Learn more at Marita Golden’s official website
